In particular, relative to independent candidates, political parties are even more polarized but yield more efficient elections since the majority party is more likely to win due to vote coordination of its supporters.
This piece first appeared in TheMonkey Cage. Reprinted with permission. Originally published as "These Two Arguments Make Americans Less Opposed to Court Packing" in The Monkey Cage at The Washington Post on March 27, 2019. Should Democrats try to add more justices to the Supreme Court? Some 2020 presidential candidates are discussing the idea — responding to …
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The partisanship on display in McKay’s film is unfortunate on many levels. As a writer and director, he has squandered the acting talents of an exceptional cast, brilliant editing, and dazzling cinematography. Amy Adams and Christian Bale are top-shelf actors, among the few who could pull off Shakespearian wordplay as contemporary pillow talk, and they do it with superb comic effect at McKay’s direction. While McKay does a solid job of portraying the genuine love and affection the Cheneys have for each other and their children, the emotional impact is diminished, even relegated to a minor theme, by the end of the movie.
So far, the response has been mixed. Some Democrats have urged the party to come down “hard” on Biden, noting that this is the only way to get him to change his behavior. Others argue downplay Biden as “touchy-feely” and argue that Democrats should be careful and not take the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace “too far.” At the time of this writing, women’s rights groups have largely been silent on Biden’s behavior. However, it would not be surprising if some groups, particularly those lacking strong relationship with the Democratic Party machine, used Biden as a rally point to build their supporter base and fill their coffers in the near future.
Yet these solutions have not caught on because screening against a single criterion is so entrenched in public policy. Perhaps if Murphy’s Regulations were to become as much a part of the public policy lexicon as Murphy’s Law, attention would turn to what actually does go wrong as opposed to throwing up hands in the assumption that everything is going wrong.
By looking at trade from a multidimensional perspective, we can better understand why President Trump has taken the trade positions he has and where those policies fit on the ideological spectrum. It also makes clear that trade policy is more complicated politically than often imagined, since we can’t just talk about free traders vs. protectionists, but must also consider fair traders—who are neither—and different types of protectionists.
Economic forces are working against the Green New Deal’s infrastructure plan and its supporters don’t seem to understand this. Smaller local initiatives, such as reforming land-use regulations to encourage more density, the elimination of parking requirements and free parking, and congestion taxes, would reduce driving and carbon emissions and can be tailored to individual communities in a way that grandiose national plans can’t.
It’s easy for politicians to demonize rich corporate executives and demand they fund solutions. Most of us aren’t rich and thus won’t have to chip in, making for an easy sell. But a lack of money is often not the biggest problem, and solutions that ask more people to contribute force public officials to maintain some fiscal discipline.
George Washington began his presidency two centuries before Ross published her book. But he would likely agree with her conclusion that “the central problem of American social science (is) the fate of the American republic in time.”
The Supreme Court could weigh in on whether these reversals should impact the amendment’s addition to the Constitution. But, it is not clear that it would. In fact, the Supreme Court opted not to rule on a rescinded ratification in 1939 on the Child Labor Amendment whose ratification period had expired.
